Mules survive tourney opener

NEWMARKET — Taylor Linck led the Newmarket High School girls basketball team onto the floor, then veered off toward the sideline.

She was scratched from Tuesday’s home playoff game with a sprained ankle, and her teammates used the injury as motivation.

“I really wanted to see her play again,” said Newmarket junior Katrina Holmes.

With its patented defense — and freshman Maddie Teague — leading the way, Newmarket gave its senior three more days to heal.

Teague, filling Linck’s spot in the starting lineup, scored 16 points, Holmes added 12 and sixth-seeded Newmarket used a 25-2 run to secure a 52-38 win over No. 11 Wilton-Lyndeborough in the first round of the Division IV tournament.

Up next is a near four-hour trek to Colebrook Academy and the D-IV quarterfinals. The third-seeded Mohawks advanced Tuesday with a 71-35 win over No. 14 Nute.

Newmarket was hardly complaining about the long trip.

“I’m really hoping for a coach bus, like Sunapee,” Teague joked of the ride, “but I don’t know if that’s going to happen.”

The Mules (14-5) were in danger of making new plans altogether after Tuesday’s first quarter. They fumbled away turnovers, surrendered 11 points to Wilton’s Sami Bosquet and trailed 15-8 entering the second.

Then Holmes, Teague and Newmarket’s defense took over.

Holmes, pushing the tempo and scrapping for rebounds, scored six straight points to give Newmarket the lead — and they never trailed again. The Mules closed the half with a 19-2 run and the lead was 27-17 at halftime.

“The beginning of the second quarter, looking at the clock and knowing that maybe we only have a couple minutes left of basketball, it really hit me,” Holmes said. “I really want to play with these girls again because I’ve been growing up playing with them. It was like that one drive to get going.”

Wilton-Lyndeborough (7-12) went a combined 13 minutes without a field goal, starting from the closing seconds of the first quarter. It trailed 31-17 when the drought finally ended with 3:28 remaining in the third.

“We decided we wanted to play defense and take care of the basketball,” Newmarket coach Randy Edgerly said of the difference. “I’m happy. We did a lot of good things. We got a lot of easy buckets.”

Wilton, down as much as 40-25 in the fourth quarter, chipped its way back to within eight (46-38) with 2:49 remaining in regulation. But there was too much Teague, who scored two quick buckets to stop the run. She closed her night with a strong defensive rebound, a heady dribble move to break free from a trap and a long chest-pass to center Annaliese Schmidt for a game-clinching layup in the final minute.

“She did a fantastic job,” Edgerly said of Teague. “She finished, she did some rebounding for us. It’s been a process. She’s been working at it all year. For her first playoff game, she was huge.”

“It feels unbelievable,” Teague said. “I’m really speechless. With Taylor (Linck) hurt and everything, I had to step it up.”

The Mules fared well against Wilton’s full-court press, attacking it with long, football-esque passes that worked over and over again. Senior Jennifer Levesque took advantage with back-to-back layups in the fourth quarter to stop Wilton’s mini 6-0 run.

“They got two or three,” Wilton-Lyndeborough coach Denny Claire said of the play. “You can’t give up those touchdowns.”

Bosquet finished with a game-high 17 points for Wilton in defeat.

Tasha Jarosz finished with seven points off the bench for the Mules, including the team’s only made free throw (1-for-6). Seniors Levesque and Schmidt added six points apiece and Liz Hamel hit the game’s only 3-pointer to open the fourth quarter.